Tuesday, November 16, 2004

I've spent the two weeks since the election writing again and again about how the socially conservative religious and moral concerns of large portions of the American population (mostly in the rural South and West) need to be granted more respect by progressives. My argument has been that incorporating such religious and moral thinking into the campaign for progressive causes is not only strategically necessary, if any sort of coherent movement to preserve social justice is to make headway in America today, but also wise, in that such values can support and extend the progressive argument in important ways. I believe all that. But I don't want to be painted as someone who believes that religious conservatives in America today, and particularly in the South, are at this moment ready and willing to join in some sort of populist-socialist crusade, because that's ridiculous. Making recommendations to my fellow progressives doesn't mean that I don't realize that most of the hard work has to be done in local religious communities themselves, which have (for both understandable and perverse reasons) to a great extent locked themselves into mindset that rejects much social obligation. Case in point: Alabama and Amendment 2.

This morning, I read John Brummett's column about the close but likely defeat of Amendment 2 in Alabama, a proposed amendment to the state constitution which would have repealed segregation-era language included in the document back in the 1950s. The strategy of Alabama politicians back then to avoid any potential interference with their racist educational system was to amend the constitution so that it included, besides poll taxes and mandated segregation, language which denied the right to an education at taxpayer expense for any Alabama child. Thanks to federal action, poll taxes and the doctrine of separate-but-equal was rendered moot; but the rejectionist language itself remains in the constitution, and has become a branch which many of those who reject a sense of obligation to the larger (and multiracial) social unit which Alabama in fact is continue to cling to. The push for Amendment 2 was led by Governor Bob Riley, who has bravely fought for a better Alabama before, and done so on explicitly Christian grounds. But once again, the Christian Coalition of Alabama and many of their Republican allies refused to budge on their opposition. Not that they necessarily still harbor segregationist sympathies; Amendment 2's opponents insisted that the racist language in their state constitution is meaningless, and that they would introduce legislation to strip them in particular anyway. But to actually get rid of that specific aspect of the constitution which at one time allowed the white population of the state to avoid obligations to the black population, and which is now embraced as a way to keep taxes low and keep the state from being obliged to actually repair the deeply divided and unequal public education system in the state...well, that's taking things too far. Roy "Ten Commandments" Moore took to the barricades, insisting that Christian schools and home schoolers of all sorts would be forced by itchy trial lawyers, looking for a chance to sue the state, to accept onerous and unfair tax burdens if a right for all citizens to be equally educated were recognized by the constitution. His argument appears to have worked, at least barely.

The discussion about this ugly vote over at James Joyner's blog is revealing. Yes, Alabama does have a terrible constitution, a convolunted mess with over 700 amendments running to 12 times the length of the average state constitution; perhaps it is not unreasonable to believe that a great many voters simply vote against any and all amendments purely out of disgust. And no, of course the tax-via-lawsuit issue isn't a red herring; as a resident of Arkansas, I understand very well the complicated and painful issues which arise when the state constitution's guarantee to educate the children of its residents is forced by legal action to confront terrible disparities in wealth on the one hand and strapped state coffers on the other. I'm not crazy about addressing education inequalities through judicial intervention, and while I think a state education is valuable on its own merits, I'm not unsympathetic to those who wish to preserve a certain independence, for religious or moral reasons, from the public school system. And of course, there are communal concerns which come into play here, which bump up uncomfortably against class issues and more (see Alan Ehrenhalt's article about the reaction of isolated-- and mostly white, though he doesn't mention that--rural communities to Arkansas's school consolidation plan here, and my response here (scroll down for both)). But the fact remains that public education is perhaps the single most extensive and widely supported egalitarian program in the history of the United States; whatever its failures, supporting it (in principle, if not in its every detail) surely ought to be an obvious obligation on the part of everyone who professes to believe that God created us to bear one another's burdens, and to make no distinction between the poor and the rich. Were the opposition to this amendment by many conservatives complemented by an earnest effort to redress the injustices of Alabama's tax code, or at least ask themselves how Alabama can do better in educating all its citizens, then I could understand, if not agree, with their actions. But no such effort was made; leaving aside vague concerns about not making Alabama's messed-up government any messier, this boiled down to a simple refusal on the part of a very slight majority of Alabama voters to see themselves as obligated to those who lack the resources or opportunity to either escape from or improve their own public education. I dislike seeing Southerners tarred with the legacy of segregation, but Brummett is not entirely wrong in referring to many Christian schools as "retro tools of resegregation"--spend much time in the South, particularly the Deep South (Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana), and you'll see how many churches and social organizations set up "private" academies in the wake of desegregation, and how the continuing impact of those admittedly often excellent religious schools warps (and depletes) the funding and administrative resources of the local school districts which remain to take care of that portion of the population left behind.

Dealing with civic obligations is never easy, and the compromises which follow the demand that, for example, a right to an education be recognized are never going to satisfy everyone. But I'd much rather see every Southern state go through the stress which Arkansas has experienced over the last ten years or more than watch a large number of white Christian voters unknowingly (or worse, knowingly) brush aside a fundamental egalitarian and Christian principle as part of a partisan struggle. Many social and religious conservatives in the South and West have drawn themselves away from civic responsibility, shamefully allowing archaic and otherwise rejected political strategies to provide them with a way to hide from the inequality and need that education can provide at least a partial solution to. In this case, progressives like myself have our work cut out for ourselves locally; the problem isn't blue, but entirely and embarrassingly red.

19 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I think you (and Harry over at Crooked Timber) are obviously right that lefties need to figure out new way to convince social conservatives to address civic obligations we find important, particularly education. But Gov. Riley did try to do just that last year. He took on tax reform, attached it to education, and couched his argument in religious terms. Result: his proposal got thumped. Much hard work to do.

Jason is right as well. If there is a lesson in trying to bring progressive ideas to the populace at large it can be seen in the battle over tax reform and Amendment Two in Alabama. A Republican Governor, who was one of the most consistently conservative votes in the US House of Representatives prior to becoming Gov., proposes a sweeping tax reform package with the backing of a diverse group of interests that is soundly defeated by the Christian Coalition and other right-wing interest groups.

Then, a relatively simple amendment to the Constitution is defeated based on absolutlely no sound ground. The Governor had lost a lot of credibility because of the failure of the tax reform package and was now viewed as a closet "tax and spender". So, even his voice could not carry the day. Progressives must be aware of the potential for baseless attacks and have clear responses that expose the attackers and their real motives.

There was a lot of hand-wringing by progressives in Alabama about how they couldn't understand why the Amendment failed. Well, if the argument being made is that the language would allow for courts to impose taxes on the people, the response should be loud and clear that this COULD NOT HAPPEN, it was LEGALLY IMPOSSIBLE. Some people, including the Governor, made the argument, but not nearly loudly enough to counter the conspiracy theorists.

If Kristopher's account is accurate, this becomes part of an unfortunate trend, but an unfortunate trend with a silver lining.

The basic tenet of social equality, or at least some version of equality of opportunity, persists in some form in the reddest of our red communities. As does a desire for basic competence and good governance. When these desires and trends fly in the face of the requirements of movement conservatism, it isn't the basic principles that get dropped, it's the facts. Just as any news that suggests that the Bush administration hasn't exactly been successful, even on their own terms, is met with the multi-functional cry of "liberal media bias!" and dismissed with. The observation that admendment two was an affirmation of basic fairness and decency was met with the rallying cry of "frivolous lawsuits!" with similar apparent success.

This, to me, suggests that the "problem for the Democrats" with voters of this ilk is not simply about crafting the right mix of policies to appeal to them, or (as many others have suggested) framing our policies in the right manner. It's about finding a way to break through the epistemic wall that's been erected, whereby all facts inconvenient to movement conservatism can be easily dismissed with some slight of hand like the liberal media or frivolous lawsuits or what have you.

On a personal note, I'll encounter this divide in a couple of weeks when I'll inevitably have a run-in with my Uncle, probably on the perrenial issue of funding and tax bases. He'll make some crack about us Seattle liberals and how our tax-and-spend ways bleed good rural communities such as his. I'll politely explain that Seattle's tax base provides services and infrastructural support for his impovershed community that the local economic base ever could. He'll look at me like I'm from Mars, and around we'll go. And it's worth noting that on some level, he respects me and my education (near-complete PhD in Political Science) a great deal, but it's not enough to break through the epistemological divide.

The silver lining alluded to above is that some of the values of decency and fairness probably persist even when votes such as this one cast doubt on that assertion. The bad news: it's a lot easier to craft a good message that speaks to the best part of the values of (much of) red America than it is to break down this wall.

Last summer, when the issue in Alabama was school spending, a lot of us felt that the progressive national organizations were seriously remiss in failing to support Gov. Riley. I opined that "they [didn't] want a Republican to get a 'win,' and they [weren't] paying attention to a Southern state because they live on the East and West Coasts and wrote off Dixie long ago." Is that a fair assessment? Did their failure to support Riley matter to the outcome in Alabama? Is there any chance that they could build a bridge to him now?

I whole-heartedly agree with DJW on this one. The rural v. urban, heartland v. coast framework is largely a cognitive problem for the Democrats. The idea that there is a economically comfortable, urban liberal elite which wants to wipe your way of life off the planet can be keyed into just about any Republican issue these days, and some Democrats will often play along while muttering to themselves, "I'd rather lose every election than pander to bigots like these people..."

There is bad news all around for the Democrats, to be sure. The better news is that losing has a cleansing effect. Maybe it will take Hillary getting trounced in 2008 for the cleansing to be complete. But next election cycle, there is going to be a lot of Democratic challengers in th South and West. Some of them might win. If so, they will have done so by successfully breaking through the cognitive barrier that Democrats have in those places.

It wouldn't be legally impossible for an Alabama court, presented with the revised constitution (as proposed) to determine that the amendment created a right to a taxpayer funded education for every child in Alabama, and to, in essence, take over the education system to protect that right. I live in a state with a constitutional guarantee of public education, and we've been held hostage by a state court for more than a year. Instead of letting the legislature fund education, the judge wants to dictate the acceptable level and distribution of funding, in order to protect the rights guaranteed. I'd vote to take that guarantee out of the constitution in a heartbeat, to get the case out of court and put the issue back into the political sphere. The political sphere will raise my taxes without doubt, but I'll know who to credit and who to blame.

As a lawyer myself, I have to agree with Thomas and disagree with Kristopher. Indeed, I have to ask: Kristopher, are you a lawyer? Will your firm (or if you are not a lawyer, a firm that you retain) give an opinion of counsel unqualifiedly affirming what you have said? I doubt it.

As a lawyer, parent and Christian, I would have to characterize the courts and the public schools as avowedly anti-Christian. I certainly wouldn't send my children to public school, nor do I understand why I am morally obliged to support anti-Christian institutions. It would be much better to fund scholarships at a local Christian academy, if you want to do something. Jesus told us to pay taxes, but he assuredly never told us to vote to raise other people's taxes as a means of demonstrating our moral worth.

As a lawyer, parent and Christian, I would have to characterize the courts and the public schools as avowedly anti-Christian. I certainly wouldn't send my children to public school, nor do I understand why I am morally obliged to support anti-Christian institutions. It would be much better to fund scholarships at a local Christian academy, if you want to do something. Jesus told us to pay taxes, but he assuredly never told us to vote to raise other people's taxes as a means of demonstrating our moral worth.I agree and moreover anyone who thinks that they have a “right” to vote themselves or another a subsidy paid for with someone else’s tax dollars (regardless of whether they’re willing to pay more themselves) is a thief, pure and simple. While arguably giving your own money by voluntary choice to a needy person is Christian, there is nothing “Christian” about voting to raise the taxes of others in any sense of the word.

It wouldn't be legally impossible for an Alabama court, presented with the revised constitution (as proposed) to determine that the amendment created a right to a taxpayer funded education for every child in Alabama, and to, in essence, take over the education system to protect that right. I live in a state with a constitutional guarantee of public education, and we've been held hostage by a state court for more than a year. Instead of letting the legislature fund education, the judge wants to dictate the acceptable level and distribution of funding, in order to protect the rights guaranteed. I'd vote to take that guarantee out of the constitution in a heartbeat, to get the case out of court and put the issue back into the political sphere. The political sphere will raise my taxes without doubt, but I'll know who to credit and who to blame.We had something similar here in Minnesota where our constitution states that the legislature has a duty to “establish a general and uniform system of public schools.” The NAACP or some other racialist group filed suit that because some ethnic minority students were behind in test scores that the system was therefore not “uniform” and hence unconstitutional. Even though the suit seems frivolous IMO, they managed to extort a settlement which (predictably) was another excuse to raise taxes.

Looks like the people of the good State of Alabama decided to learn from our mistake and not give them the opening. In which case they were wiser than their detractors have given them credit.

Hmm. I went to Alabama public schools in the 80s and early 90s and now my daughter does too. I saw nothing then, and I see nothing now that would prevent anyone from practicing their Christian religion. In the 1980s, in fact, I remember some low level persecution of non-Christians by individual teachers or administrators, but I think that that is much less common today. It is true that the public schools no longer actively affirm Christianity or force students to pray together, but individual silent prayer is still possible, as our gatherings around the flag pole before or after school.

Also, Christian schools cannot educate everyone even if they wanted to. If they tried to, they would lose much of the character that is valued by people who send their kids there. Like it or not, the public schools are necessary for the vast majority of children. By refusing to fund education, we are denying them opportunities.

Finally, I have seen little evidence of Christian schools offering large numbers of scholarships to the poor. I don't think that they can afford them and I don't think most Christians are interested in donating money for that purpose.

I should exempt the Catholic Church from much of what I said in my comment above. They have done a much better job of offering quality education to the poor than other denominations. Still, in Alabama, there are not enough Catholics to pick up the slack.

This is where you have to know Alabama law to know what you're talking about. No, I am not a lawyer, but there are about a dozen other amendments and provisions in the constitution that prevent the state courts from intervening in the funding of our schools. This is where the discussion on the amendment got very murky. Many past Supreme Court Justices assured the Governor and the citizenry (again, too quietly) that this was the case. If you look at the language of the amendment it looks like the case you all are making is a possibility. However, it's the other provisions of the constitution and state law that would prevent the removal of those words from having any real effect.

So why remove them? Because they were added to discriminate and attempt to get around Brown vs. Board. It's archaic language that should be eliminated.

TW is operating with a very odd sense of theft. Would it, for example, consititute theft to raise taxes in order to secure a fair justice system? Or to secure a police force sufficiently capable and non-corruptable to protect churches from fire-bombers? No; because we are all obliged to contribute to the maintenance of a system in which all our fellow citizens can have their rights secured. But the assertion that every child has the right to a government-funded education is simply the assertion of a right. It is one for which there is extremely powerful normative justification (unlike, for example, the purported 'right to bear arms'). Of course, that can only be secured through a system of taxation, and no-one has the right to exempt themsleves from contributing to the maintenance of a fair system of rights. The thieves, if you want to use that language, are those who vote to maintain low taxes so that they can refrain from fulfilling their moral duties to others.

I agree and moreover anyone who thinks that they have a “right” to vote themselves or another a subsidy paid for with someone else’s tax dollars (regardless of whether they’re willing to pay more themselves) is a thief, pure and simple. While arguably giving your own money by voluntary choice to a needy person is Christian, there is nothing “Christian” about voting to raise the taxes of others in any sense of the word.is the purest evidence one would need that the idea of "outreach" to the fundamentalists is pointless. They're not lost sheep who have strayed into the rightwing fold despite being Christians, simply for lack of love from leftwing democrats. They're deeply rightwing people who have managed to reconstruct, on the basis of some pretty creative scholarship, a version of Christianity which accords with rightwing values. The phrase "the quest for a higher moral justification for selfishness" echoes through my mind for some reason.

Dsquared,what you say seems true of TW and, I'm sure, of numerous members of the congregations. I aven't bothered to elaborate fully my views about this mainly because pnuemonia has got me in its grip, but here are two points. 1) not all right-wing Christians are the same, and there is a swathe (I don't know how big) of people who have simply constructed their Christianity in the image of a certain dominant norm of evangelical Christianity, rather than out of any pre-existing commitment to the mistaken political values it espouses. 2) A lot of what we do gives ammunition to the political entreprenuers on the religious right who are trying to entrench their political power in a place that it doesn't necessarily belong. Why do I think this? Truth is, its not from data but from anectdote; I am very close to a good number of right-wing evangelical Christians, and spend a lot of time talking to them, and have a sense of what they, at least, are truly committed to and what by contrast they believe just because they inhabit a world of ideological self-isolation to which vicious right-wing entrepreneurs have a lot fo access and to which we have none.

But I have to say that almost exactly your thoughts crossed my mind when reading TW's comment!!

Dsquared, here's something funny about political ideology here in the states. Namely, we're susceptible to ill-conceived, simple-minded libertarian rhetoric. This applies across the political spectrum in different forms. I've found few people (TW and the army of internet libertarians are exceptions here) who'll take this too far when challenged. Obviously, right-wing Christians don't buy libertarianism as an ideology at all, but they use the rhetoric occasionally. So do lefties. The libertarian impulse in this country is strong; the degree of actual libertarianism is slight.

To put it another way, I could get most of my right-wing Christian relatives to back off a statement like that pretty quickly. I've had no similar luck trying to pursuade them to take a different tack on "moral" (in the exit poll meaning of the term) issues.

Right, DJW articulates my experience more articulately than I did. I too can't get them to back of their 'moral' issues commitments. But I can get them to expand them (as I bet you, DJW, can too).

Note also that evangelical Christianity in, say, the UK, is associated with the same kinds of 'moral issues' positions as in the US, but not at all with libertarian/property rights positions in economic policy. What is it about the US that produces this distortion?

Quotes

"[T]he press was still the last resource of the educated poor who could not be artists and would not be tutors. Any man who was fit for nothing else could write an editorial or a criticism....The press was an inferior pulpit; an anonymous schoolmaster; a cheap boarding-school; but it was still the nearest approach to a career for the literary survivor of a wrecked education."

"Mailer was a Left Conservative. So he had his own point of view. To himself he would suggest that he tried to think in the style of [Karl] Marx in order to attain certain values suggested by Edmund Burke."

(Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night [The New American Library, 1968], 185)

"The tendency, which is too common in these days, for young men to get a smattering of education and then think themselves unsuited for mechanical or other laborious pursuits is one that should not be allowed to grow up among us...Every one should make it a matter of pride to be a producer, and not a consumer alone."

(Wilford Woodruff, Millennial Star [November 14, 1887], 773)

"We are parts of the world; no one of us is an isolated world-whole. We are human beings, conceived in the body of a mother, and as we stepped into the larger world, we found ourselves immediately knotted to a universe with the thousand bands of our senses, our needs and our drives, from which no speculative reason can separate itself."

"'Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. 'Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!'"

(Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol [Candlewick Press, 2006], 35)

"The Master said, 'At fifteen, I set my mind upon learning; at thirty, I took my place in society; at forty, I became free of doubts; at fifty, I understood Heaven's Mandate; at sixty, my ear was attuned; and at seventy, I could follow my heart's desires without overstepping the bounds of propriety.'"

"Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and its phenomena grow more and more able to formulate, as the foundations of their theories, principles which admit a wide and coherent development: while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations."

"[God] does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it. . . . His ideal is a man who, having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation), washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him."

"Money is simply a tool. We use money as a proxy for our time and labor--our life energy--to acquire things that we cannot (or care not to) procure or produce with our own hands. Beyond that, it has limited actual utility: you can't eat it; if you bury it in the ground, it will not produce a crop to sustain a family; it would make a lousy roof and a poor blanket. To base our understanding of economy simply on money overlooks all other methods of exchange that can empower communities. Equating an economy only with money assumes there are no other means by which we can provide food for our bellies, a roof over our heads and clothing on our backs."

"A scholar's business is to add to what is known. That is all. But it is capable of giving the very greatest satisfaction, because knowledge is good. It does not have to look good or even sound good or even do good. It is good just by being knowledge. And the only thing that makes it knowledge is that it is true. You can't have too much of it and there is no little too little to be worth having. There is truth and falsehood in a comma."

"I believe in democracy. I accept it. I will faithfully serve and defend it. I believe in it because it appears to me the inevitable consequence of what has gone before it. Democracy asserts the fact the masses are now raised to a higher intelligence than formerly. All our civilization aims at this mark. We want to do what we can to help it. I myself want to see the result. I grant that it is an experiment, but it is the only direction society can take that is worth its taking; the only conception of its duty large enough to satisfy its instincts; the only result that is worth an effort or a risk. Every other possible step is backward, and I do not care to repeat the past. I am glad to see society grapple with issues in which no one can afford to be neutral."